Steeping with gaiwan - what am I doing wrong?

Owes its flavors to oxidation levels between green & black tea.


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Nov 5th, '12, 17:15
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Re: Steeping with gaiwan - what am I doing wrong?

by ImmortaliTEA » Nov 5th, '12, 17:15

theredbaron wrote:
brandon wrote:Please use at least 7 g / 100ml gaiwan and pour in a thin stream so as to not stir the leaves. Better yet, put the scale away and fill the gaiwan 80% full to start.
Nevertheless, i believe that when one has high quality Yancha leaves the method of filling the pot to the brim reaching a very concentrated tea suppresses the subtleties of the flavor.
This comment I believe can be a bit misleading. If the high quality Yan Cha leaves are of the highest quality,(I have read and tasted quite a few that they are usually low roasted with just enough for a slight caramelization of the leaves and not an overly burnt charcoal taste) Zheng Yan with a low roast I agree that stuffing the pot with dry leaves would suppress many if not the majority of wonderful subtleties and nuances, however, if you are talking about the medium-high roasted Yan Cha (that also has extremely high quality versions just hard to find) that most of us seem to love so much, I completely disagree and find that you will be missing out on a lot if you don't use at least 2/3 to 3/4 or even a filled vessel of dry leaves.

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Nov 5th, '12, 17:21
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Re: Steeping with gaiwan - what am I doing wrong?

by ImmortaliTEA » Nov 5th, '12, 17:21

debunix wrote:
spinmail wrote:Thanks to the information here, I had much better results by increasing the amount of dry tea - which also increased the "rock tea" flavor, as well.
Still, you do have to leave some room for the fully wetted leaves to expand and shift about a little in the water.
Debatable!

Refer to Tim's recent thread that I agree with 100%.

"220 ml with 26.6 grams of High Fired Anxi TiKwanYin, aged 2 years.

There is a perception on the "Internet University" that while brewing Gong-Fu session, we need to let the tea to expend. So how much space does it need? Do they need to have enough room to flow around or they need to push up the lid and cant even close the door?

I don't care less on super market quality oolong to flow around in a teabag, thats why there are teabag's tea. But if brewing a high quality oolong and the session ended with not enough tea leaves, I think that simply wasting the full potential of the precious leaf, time and money.

Traditional ChaoZhou Kung-fu tea not only need compact building of tea in a pot, but also requires different grade of crashed leaves.

So whats your ratio? Flowing around like granny style while kung-fooing or pack to the gills that left you buzzing all night?"

Nov 5th, '12, 21:55
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Re: Steeping with gaiwan - what am I doing wrong?

by theredbaron » Nov 5th, '12, 21:55

ImmortaliTEA wrote:
This comment I believe can be a bit misleading. If the high quality Yan Cha leaves are of the highest quality,
Those are the ones that i am talking about.
Most Yancha on the market is rather high roasted, much of it to obscure the not that great leaf quality (but as you said, not all high roasted Yancha is low quality). But Yancha does not need to be high roasted. Those top quality Yancha are a dream. I have a small supply which i dip into once a while (not more than once a week for my Shui Shien, and maybe once a month at most for my Ti Lo Han), trying to stretch it out. These teas also cost a lot of money.
I have several not too bad higher roasted Yancha, and there i do agree that a higher leaf to water ratio is generally better.

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